As long as you are into self-revelation on a vblog, my dear Ann, someone suggested you pose in a tub with soap bubbles over your nipples on a videoblog. As far as I'm concerned, I'd like to see you on a videoblog nude...no tub or bubbles or whatever. Think you can arrange that ?

The way to get around the weariness of travel is not to think that you need any set amount of sleep. It's cool to see you displaced in travel (and trying to compensate for it by staying at nice places). I often feel displaced in staying put.

"This current generation of media mogul sleeps just fine. You don’t get to that position by having a conscience. I’ve worked in network tv for 11 yrs and any sense of noblesse oblige or class or just plain compassion is a dead, ridiculed concept among senior management. A few thousand people losing their houses in foreclosure or dozens of restaurants shutting down or kids not being able to attend college will not bother them in the least. Hell, bread lines on every street corner wouldn’t bother them. You’re either a competitor or a schmuck, and they truly don’t understand the concept of someone just trying to put food on the table. In the 17 yrs I’ve worked in entertainment, Hollywood has gone from a fraternity system with its ridiculous little hazing rituals to something much darker and meaner and more cosa nostra. I think this is my last year … it’s just no fun anymore."

Thanks, Randy. I enjoyed meeting you, and the others at the Althouse round-up, as well. Cheers.

By the way, I am off tomorrow to Dallas for several days of insufferably tedious meetings. The only relief will be Friday afternoon, when I will drive a NASCAR racer laps at the Texas Motor Speedway. I have done a fair amount of sports car driving on road courses, but this will by my first effort at NASCAR driving. Should be a blast.

Mothers selling their daughters into prostitution. Fathers taking that last drink before spitting up on their sons. Teens tossing their just-born babies in dumpsters. Cane scheming against Abel. Abraham selling, his first born son, down the river..... and these are the "good" families.

Yet, in the Hollywood corporate workplace, life is supposed to be fair and just.

No wonder TV is so bad, these days. Look at the clueless idiots who write that stuff.

Trooper, as much as I like stirring up Lucky, I am all for ignoring tc. On the other hand, you've chosen to highlight tc's fantasy, which I admit is growing on me by the moment as a result of ducky. Given the egg salad sandwich imbroglio, perhaps Althouse could be persuaded to name a price for a bubble-bath vlog. That would both titillate her many male admirers and enrage her critics, I think, almost beyond measure.

Imagine the vortex as cyclone.

Tired as she is, Althouse did briefly hold up her obligatory glass of wine tonight. Unlike those joyless critics, I am a great lover of that noble gift of God, and I think Althouse looks stylish and relaxed swirling a little Chilean cabernet in a balloon glass. To me, as it obviously does to Althouse, a glass of wine symbolizes a pleasant conversation among friends.

I also appreciate Althouse's fine appearance and tasteful clothing in these vlogs. My only caution is that she not mix personal grooming and wine drinking, as this multi-tasking bride-to-be is doing.

A bubble-bath vlog would simplify the wardrobe issue, and I hope not complicate the question of hair and makeup, not to mention the MacBook perched on the edge of a tub.

I beg to differ my good man. I am not commenting on anything other than the good woman’s choice of bath toys. Subtly and misdirection are the order of the day. All is not as it seems. Only the Shadow knows.

I agree. I am often totaly naked when posting a comment on the blog. Except for the underwear I wear on my head in honor of the poor children in Africa who can't afford Fruit of the Loom and have to make do with banana leaves.

Maxine Weiss said..."No wonder TV is so bad, these days. Look at the clueless idiots who write that stuff."

That was my (concededly cynical) reaction to the writers strike, too. I hate to break it to the writers, but if they're the people responsible for the writing that makes it onto TV, I'm having trouble seeing how the strike won't be the best thing to happen to television since the vacuum tube.

Imagine Althouse up to her neck in bubbles, swirling a glass of Stag's Leap cabernet or a little Carneros chardonnay, holding forth on her favorite topics. She could pull rubber ducky out of the water at strategic moments to illustrate points.

Of course she must be careful when setting up, as there are often unexpected problems with bubble baths.

In any event, a naked vlog is crude titillation and lacks the bubbly sophistication we expect from Althouse.

Why don't you write down what you want to say, run it through one of those language translators a few times, then read us the result?

I've done that before--translated a blog post into Portuguese via the Babelfish, then posted the results back into the Babelfish and re-translated it into English. The results were amusing, needless to say.

Kev:That's pretty funny.Along the same lines, do you know English as She is Spoke? It was written in 1855 as a Portuguese-English phrase book and conversational guide, and is commonly regarded as the worst language book ever written. It became an instant classic, so much that Mark Twain wrote in his introduction to the 1883 edition,

"Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."

Here's my fave example:--

Original Portuguese: Bem sei o que devo fazer ou me compete.

English as She is Spoke: "I know well who I have to make."

Real meaning in Engligh: "I know very well what I have to do and what my responsibilities are."

You've gotta admit the ESS version has a lot more pizzaz than the dull old "correct" translation.Someone also did an A-B with ESS vs. Babelfish. "...consider it a test of the capacity of artificial stupidity." This is a riot if you enjoy this sort of thing. Having done a minor in linguistics in college, somehow I still do.

Well, Trooper, I have this mental habit of letting conceits grow in my imagination to the point I cannot ignore them. Your damned rubber ducky has taken over my mind.

You may remember I was playing the innocent and trying to steer the conversation in wholesome directions with my links to original Bert singing the rubber ducky song, and the nice lady in the bubble-bath Jacuzzi. I carefully worded my first link, "She could pull rubber ducky out of the water...." It obviously didn't work. There is no way, post rubber ducky, that Althouse would ever touch a toe to an on-camera bubble bath.

Damn you. I still think it would have been a better idea than dry nakedness.

I've known guys like you. In a meeting, they bring up something that is more-or-less appropriate to the agenda item being discussed, but which has the effect of poisoning the well for someone, usually me. Often it's some vivid fact or number that seems to drive out previous thought and the discussion veers off, controlled by eddy currents swirling around the factoid. I've lost the best parts of my department to this sort of thing, and been given no-win scut work in the aftermath.